Working outside SAP for things you are using SAP is one of the worst ideas, ever. You create data redundancy, jeopardize compliance, erode user trust and make migration and even simple changes near impossible. So yes, forbidding that is a good idea. One I enforced more than once. Well, at least I tried. Might even have worked once or twice.
Reasons why people started working outside of SAP:
- because they didn't know the system well enough and didn't receive proper training. Sometimes also out of pure spite.
- sometimes because SAP didn't have that functionality yet. Ship planning for example was an issue in the early 2000s IIRC
- because people wanted and had to use a SAP-standard process, but couldn't because somepone else ripped that standard appart to do something differetn. Either because the original standard for that was itself ripped appart by someone else. Or because people refuse to follow the standard out of reasons. Misusing standards is beast in SAP. Once you start with a single process, that spirals out of control and cannot be stopped. Part of the reason a lot SAP implementations just suck. Not purelySAPs fault so.
> because they didn't know the system well enough and didn't receive proper training
A lot of the interactions that simple employees have with SAP shouldn't require training though.
I shouldn't have to get a training to be able to fill a small list of hours, and it shouldn't take me 30 minutes to do so. I shouldn't have to get a training to be able to read a received request and validate it.
Reasons why people started working outside of SAP:
- because they didn't know the system well enough and didn't receive proper training. Sometimes also out of pure spite.
- sometimes because SAP didn't have that functionality yet. Ship planning for example was an issue in the early 2000s IIRC
- because people wanted and had to use a SAP-standard process, but couldn't because somepone else ripped that standard appart to do something differetn. Either because the original standard for that was itself ripped appart by someone else. Or because people refuse to follow the standard out of reasons. Misusing standards is beast in SAP. Once you start with a single process, that spirals out of control and cannot be stopped. Part of the reason a lot SAP implementations just suck. Not purelySAPs fault so.